Editorial: At the wheel of a loaded weapon

The initial look at recent number crunching done by traffic planners about fatal crashes in Tippecanoe County offered few patterns to attribute to the wheres and hows involved.

But the planners did uncover a trend that can't be ignored: the number of times an impaired driver was involved in a fatal crash.

In a five-year study, from 2008 to 2012, 40 percent of the 64 fatal crashes involved a driver who was legally drunk or impaired by drugs. In 2011, the percentage was 64 percent.

In other words, those drivers had no business getting behind the wheel.

Defenses decline as the level of drunkenness goes up. So the time to hammer home a message about giving up the keys when too many beverages have been consumed or drugs have been taken is now - in the sobriety of daylight, before an instinctive "no, no, I'm fine to drive" sets in.

The chances are that drunken drivers can avoid police and trouble if they nurse their vehicle home after one too many.

But the risk involved - especially to the innocents in oncoming traffic - is simply too great.

A car in a drunken driver's control is a loaded weapon. The sooner everyone figures that out, the safer we'll all be.

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Editorial: At the wheel of a loaded weapon

The initial look at recent number crunching done by traffic planners about fatal crashes in Tippecanoe County offered few patterns to attribute to the wheres and hows involved.